It’s Heating Up In Toledo

08 Jun It’s Heating Up In Toledo

Project Showcase made it’s appearance last Friday at the Toledo High School as Andy and I spent the day capturing photo and video content and talking to the entire student body at an assembly. We were on a wickedly crammed schedule. Our goal was to come down and create some powerful, dramatic photographs to display in the community, photos of various students in specific compositions, and get everyone pumped up (which it totally will). Somehow, we decided that 11 of these deliberate, high-caliber shoots could be done in one day. That’s right, 11 shoots, 11 different locations, situations, students, all with their own specific idea to showcase, and all executed in an 8 hour timeline. No, we didn’t scout the day before, we didn’t map it all out, but we did have a history of knowing the school from our days as students there, so we felt it wasn’t too necessary. All we had was a piece of paper with the basic subject matter for each concept. It was a run-and-gun situation, which gave the day a little more excitement/stress sprinkled on top with such a hefty goal. Oh, if you are totally lost on what the heck I’m talking about, visit ProjectShowcase.org.

So, before the first school bell rang, we were already headed to our first shoot location. Luckily, the school staff pre-selected students for our basic concepts, and the entire school was aware and extremely accommodating of our little circus act going on that day. The staff also appointed us with 5 student helpers for the day. Thank God too, cause I had a stupid amount of gear to lug around… 11 times. Setup, teardown, and packing gets a little crazy with so much stuff, so the extra hands were super appreciated. A little training on the side and the helpers were breaking down my lighting gear and packing by the third shoot all by themselves, it was a well-oiled machine. They really did a great job and saved us a ton of time, making our crazy goal reachable.

Like I said, and no pun intended, all of these concepts were completely shot from the hip, and we were on a major time crunch. We literally walked into a room, got the lay of the land, setup lights, shot and packed back up in 30-40 mins max. This pace was kept throughout the whole day. It was a nice day out, and we were fortunate enough to spend the second half of the day outside shooting the sports concepts (gotta love farmer’s tan!).

This Saturday, everyone attending the Toledo High School graduation ceremony will be getting a little visual treat, courtesy of the Project Showcase team, to take home with them. It is the first release of some of the imagery taken from our production last Friday at the school. The picture above is a closeup of the cutting torch, something we worked into our metal shop photo concept. Stay tuned for more!